Job, Chapter 39, Verse 16
She
cruelly disowns her young and her labor is useless; she has no fear.
Job is now being confronted by He that Is. “The wings of the
ostrich flap away; her plumage is lacking in feathers. When she
abandons her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand, she forgets
that a foot may crush them, that the wild beasts may trample them; she cruelly
disowns her young and her labor is useless; she has no fear. For God has
withheld wisdom from her and given her no share in understanding.Yet when she
spreads her wings high, she laughs at a horse and rider.
Discourse of God[1]
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Enter
God. He comes down in a whirlwind and poses a number of rhetorical questions to
Job, all of which are designed to show Job how small he is in relation to the
universe...which, by the way, God created.
·
God's
wisdom isn't like human wisdom. After all, God is concerned with making waves
flow and the architecture of the heavens.
·
This
doesn't mean that human affairs don't concern him; they're just one part of a
vast, unknowable whole.
·
Basically,
Job's question is answered with a bunch of equally unanswerable questions. He
is completely and totally out of his league on this one.
·
God
talks of natural things in human terms so that Job can understand them. By
doing so, he illustrates how the mortal and the immortal are so far apart even
though they are physically close together (38:28).
Has the rain a
father? Who has begotten the drops of dew?
Humility at its source is knowing that all goodness comes from the
Spirit; even in the mist of our crosses.
Prayer
Fitness Friday-Suffering[3]
When I first started training for marathons a little
over ten years ago, my coach told me
something I’ve never forgotten: that I would need to learn how to be
comfortable with being uncomfortable. I didn’t know it at the time, but
that skill, cultivated through running, would help me as much, if not more, off
the road as it would on it. It’s not just me, and
it’s not just running. Ask anyone whose day regularly includes a hard bike
ride, sprints in the pool, a complex problem on the climbing wall, or a
progressive powerlifting circuit, and they’ll likely tell you the same: A
difficult conversation just doesn’t seem so difficult anymore. A tight deadline
is not so intimidating. Relationship problems are not so problematic. Maybe
it’s that if you’re regularly working out, you’re simply too tired to care. But
that’s probably not the case. Research shows that, if anything, physical
activity boosts short-term brain function and heightens awareness. And even on
days they don’t train — which rules out fatigue as a factor — those who
habitually push their bodies tend to confront daily stressors with a stoic
demeanor. While the traditional benefits of vigorous exercise — like prevention
and treatment of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and
osteoporosis — are well known and often reported, the most powerful benefit
might be the lesson that my coach imparted to me: In a world where comfort is
king, arduous physical activity provides a rare opportunity to practice suffering. Few hone this skill better than professional
endurance and adventure athletes. Regardless of sport, the most resounding
theme, by far, is that they’ve all learned how to embrace uncomfortable situations:
·
Olympic marathoner Des Linden told me that at
mile 20 of 26.2, when the inevitable suffering kicks in, through years of
practice she’s learned to stay relaxed and in the moment. She repeats the
mantra: “calm, calm, calm; relax, relax, relax.”
·
World-champion big-wave surfer Nic Lamb says
being uncomfortable, and even afraid, is a prerequisite to riding four-story
waves. But he also knows it’s “the path to personal development.” He’s learned
that while you can pull back, you can almost always push through. “Pushing
through is courage. Pulling back is regret,” he says.
·
Free-soloist Alex Honnold explains that, “The
only way to deal with [pain] is practice. [I] get used to it during training so
that when it happens on big climbs, it feels normal.”
·
Evelyn Stevens, the women’s record holder for
most miles cycled in an hour (29.81 – yes, that’s nuts), says that during her
hardest training intervals, “instead of thinking I want these to be over,
I try to feel and sit with the pain. Heck, I even try to embrace it.”
·
Big-mountain climber Jimmy Chin, the first
American to climb up — and then ski down — Mt. Everest’s South Pillar Route,
told me an element of fear is there in everything he does, but he’s learned how
to manage it: “It’s about sorting out perceived risk from real risk, and then
being as rational as possible with what’s left.”
But you don’t need to scale massive vertical pitches or run
five-minute miles to reap the benefits. Simply training for your first half
marathon or CrossFit competition can also yield huge dividends that carry over
into other areas of life. In the words of Kelly Starrett, one of the founding
fathers of the CrossFit movement, “Anyone can benefit from cultivating a
physical practice.” Science backs him up. A study
published in the British Journal of Health Psychology found that
college students who went from not exercising at all to even a modest program
(just two to three gym visits per week) reported a decrease in stress, smoking,
alcohol and caffeine consumption, an increase in healthy eating and maintenance
of household chores, and better spending and study habits. In addition to these
real-life improvements, after two months of regular exercise, the students also
performed better on laboratory tests of self-control. This led the researchers
to speculate that exercise had a powerful impact on the students’ “capacity for
self-regulation.” In laypeople’s terms, pushing through the discomfort
associated with exercise — saying “yes” when their bodies and minds were
telling them to say “no” — taught the students to stay cool, calm, and collected
in the face of difficulty, whether that meant better managing stress, drinking
less, or studying more. For this reason, the author
Charles Duhigg, in his 2012 bestseller The Power of Habit, calls exercise a “keystone
habit,” or a change in one area life that brings about positive effects in
other areas. Duhigg says keystone habits are powerful because “they change our
sense of self and our sense of what is possible.” This explains why the charity Back on My Feet uses
running to help individuals who are experiencing homelessness improve their
situations. Since launching in 2009, Back on My Feet has had over 5,500
runners, 40 percent of whom have gained employment after starting to run with
the group and 25 percent of whom have found permanent housing. This is also
likely why it’s so common to hear about people who started training for a
marathon to help them get over a divorce or even the death of a loved one. Another study,
this one published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, evaluated
how exercise changes our physiological response to stress. Researchers at the
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, divided students into two groups
at the beginning of the semester and instructed half to run twice a week for 20
weeks. At the end of the 20 weeks, which coincided with a particularly
stressful time for the students — exams — the researchers had the students wear
heart-rate monitors to measure their heart-rate variability, which is a common
indicator of physiological stress (the more variability, the less stress). As
you might guess by now, the students who were enrolled in the running program
showed significantly greater heart-rate variability. Their bodies literally
were not as stressed during exams: They were more comfortable during a
generally uncomfortable time. What’s remarkable and
encouraging about these studies is that the subjects weren’t exercising at
heroic intensities or volumes. They were simply doing something that was
physically challenging for them – going from no exercise to some exercise; one
need not be an elite athlete or fitness nerd to reap the bulletproofing
benefits of exercise. Why does any of this
matter? For one, articles that claim prioritizing big fitness goals is a waste
of time (exhibit A: “Don’t Run a Marathon”) are downright wrong. But
far more important than internet banter, perhaps a broader reframing of
exercise is in order. Exercise isn’t just about helping out your health down
the road, and it’s certainly not just about vanity. What you do in the gym (or
on the roads, in the ocean, etc.) makes you a better, higher-performing person
outside of it. The truth, cliché as it may sound, is this: When you develop
physical fitness, you’re developing life fitness, too.
Daily Devotions/Prayers
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National
54 day Rosary day 4
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